water. But if
she did not indulge--the courier did: that rascal Kirsch could not be
kept from the bottle, nor could he tell how much he took when he
applied to it. He was sometimes surprised himself at the way in which
Mr. Sedley's Cognac diminished. Well, well, this is a painful subject.
Becky did not very likely indulge so much as she used before she
entered a decorous family.

At last the much-bragged-about boxes arrived from Leipzig; three of
them not by any means large or splendid; nor did Becky appear to take
out any sort of dresses or ornaments from the boxes when they did
arrive. But out of one, which contained a mass of her papers (it was
that very box which Rawdon Crawley had ransacked in his furious hunt
for Becky's concealed money), she took a picture with great glee, which
she pinned up in her room, and to which she introduced Jos. It was the
portrait of a gentleman in pencil, his face having the advantage of
being painted up in pink. He was riding on an elephant away from some
cocoa-nut trees and a pagoda: it was an Eastern scene.

"God bless my soul, it is my portrait," Jos cried out. It was he
indeed, blooming in youth and beauty, in a nankeen jacket of the cut of
1804. It was the old picture that used to hang up in Russell Square.

"I bought it," said Becky in a voice trembling with emotion; "I went to
see if I could be of any use to my kind friends. I have never parted
with that picture--I never will."

"Won't you?" Jos cried with a look of unutterable rapture and
satisfaction. "Did you really now value it for my sake?"

"You know I did, well enough," said Becky; "but why speak--why
think--why look back! It is too late now!"

That evening's conversation was delicious for Jos. Emmy only came in to
go to bed very tired and unwell. Jos and his fair guest had a charming
tete-a-tete, and his sister could hear, as she lay awake in her
adjoining chamber, Rebecca singing over to Jos the old songs of 1815.
He did not sleep, for a wonder, that night, any more than Amelia.

It was June, and, by consequence, high season in London; Jos, who read
the incomparable Galignani (the exile's best friend) through every day,
used to favour the ladies with extracts from his paper during their
breakfast. Every week in this paper there is a full account of
military movements, in which Jos, as a man who had seen service, was
especially interested. On one occasion he read out--"Arrival of the
--th regiment.